A website claiming to operate a newsroom with 121 AI "journalists" is systematically republishing copyrighted stories from Canadian news outlets, including those covering Nunavut. Leah Qammaniq, the site's fictional Inuk correspondent, produces articles that are "warm, precise, and deeply local" because the content is lifted directly from real northern media like CBC North, Nunavut News, and Nunatsiaq News.
"The theft is blatant and it's happening on an industrial scale," said Paul Deegan, president of News Media Canada. The organization represents print and digital news publishers across the country and has been tracking the rise of AI-generated content that scrapes and repackages legitimate journalism.
How the fake newsroom operates
We-News.com presents itself as a legitimate outlet, claiming every story "is confirmed by multiple sources before publication." The site uses AI-generated headshots for its correspondents, a detail that Ahmed Al-Rawi, an associate professor at Simon Fraser University and lead on the Disinformation Project, said deliberately confuses readers. "The problem is that they actually have a picture of the alleged author of each news article, and that picture is a human, so it's confusing," he said. "One has to read the fine lines in order to figure it out."
The site is owned by Hong Kong-based AZ Medias Ltd. Its publisher is listed as David Dragesco, a search-engine optimization expert whose business website is also published by the same company. When Nunatsiaq News attempted to contact the outlet through its published email address, the message bounced back. Efforts to reach Dragesco directly also received no response.
Limited options for newsrooms
Brent Jolly, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, said fake newsrooms cannot be held accountable the same way real ones can if they publish false information. "As a journalist, it frankly disgusts me to see the public's right to know being manipulated by algorithms and artificial intelligence," he said. "It frustrates me to no end that this is something that the public doesn't seem to realize."
The primary legal avenue available to publishers is copyright litigation, which Deegan described as unrealistic for most newsrooms. Many cannot afford to sue, and tracking down offshore operators to serve legal documents remains difficult. Even when one site is shut down, Jolly said, replacements appear quickly. "It's a game of whack-a-mole," he said.
News Media Canada has urged the federal government not to amend the Copyright Act to create exceptions for text and data mining - a change Google has lobbied for in Generative AI and LLM training. Both Jolly and Deegan expressed disappointment that copyright was omitted from Canada's new AI strategy, released earlier in the summer with more than $2 billion in funding.
Government response and the misinformation threat
Nunatsiaq News asked Evan Solomon, Canada's minister of artificial intelligence, and Culture Minister Marc Miller for their positions on AI republishing of copyrighted newsroom material. Neither provided an answer. A spokesperson for Miller wrote that the government "remains focused on helping journalists, writers and artists create and share the work that informs Canadians," and noted an AI and cultural advisory council has been established.
Al-Rawi warned that sites like We-News might be motivated by ad revenue, or they could represent foreign actors seeking to manipulate public opinion. "[AI is] rapidly creating a flood of misinformation that is readily available for bad users, and it can be very hard to detect," he said. "It's really hard to identify the sources of these websites." A CBC spokesperson agreed the rise of AI-generated content and fake ads on social platforms presents growing challenges for fighting disinformation.
Why this matters for writers
For working writers, the We-News case is a direct example of how generative AI tools are being deployed to extract value from original reporting without compensation or attribution. The fictional Leah Qammaniq demonstrates a specific threat: AI-generated personas that borrow credibility from the communities they claim to represent while undermining the economic model that funds real local journalism. When enforcement relies on lawsuits most newsrooms cannot afford, the burden shifts to writers and publishers to understand where their work appears and to advocate for copyright frameworks that do not carve out exceptions for AI training and republishing. AI for Writers resources can help professionals track these developments and adapt to a publishing environment where attribution and originality face systematic erosion.
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